The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for preparing airfoil roots through polishing or cleaning.
In many situations it is desirable to polish or otherwise clean or prepare a workpiece. For example, in some applications, portions of airfoils for gas turbine engines are desired to be polished to remove oxidation to allow for electrical contact for a plating operation. In such situations, it is desired to remove oxidation to provide electrical contact at a bottom of a root of the airfoil. The plating operation can then be performed, such as for a Turbo Tip™ application where material is plated onto a tip of the airfoil to facilitate cut-in seal formation at the airfoil tip when installed in a gas turbine engine.
In the prior art, polishing operations were performed manually with an operator manually holding a blade root in contact with a rotating polishing brush. This manual process presents a number of ergonomic and safety concerns because the operator must perform repetitive tasks and place his or her hands near the rotating brush. Moreover, manual polishing can result in undesirable variation between polishing operations due to operator actions that are not identical for all polishing operations.
Thus, an improved method and apparatus for workpiece polishing or cleaning is desired.